Bodies, Letters, Catalogs: Filipinas in Transnational Space
1996; Duke University Press; Issue: 48 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/466786
ISSN1527-1951
Autores Tópico(s)Migration and Labor Dynamics
ResumoTransnational space keeps the Philippine economy afloat. The top three exports-electronics, garments, and remittances from overseas contract workers-have consistently been reliable sources of foreign exchange, which sustain the economy especially in times of crisis. The Filipina and her body prefigure this space, moving from work in the home to homework outside the home. Filipinas have been integrated into the circuits of transnationalism in various ways: as sweatshop factory workers in multinational corporations within the national space, and as entertainers, domestic helpers, nurses, and mail-order brides in international spaces. These spatial locations, after all, are artifacts of power relations. The analysis of these various locations remaps the discursive circuits in the oblique enforcement of power that places bodies and nations in a transnational juncture. This article examines the geopolitics of Filipina bodies inscribed in transnational space, specifically focusing on the problematics of the mail-order bride phenomenon as a social and political practice. Advertised mostly for middle-class, elderly white men, mail-order brides embody the hyperreal shopping for the First World male and the hyperreal commodification of women and the Third World. In the past ten years, 50,000 Filipinas came into the United States as mail-order brides. Each year, some 19,000 Filipinas leave the Philippines to unite with husbands and fiances of other nationalities, the majority of whom are in the United States. This article provides a cognitive map of the discourse of mail-order brides, analyzing the marketing mode (catalogs in particular) at the cultural level (race, sexuality, etc.) as well as at the sociopolitical level (economics, development, geopolitics, im/migration). The discourse of mail-order brides in transnational space posits women and femininity as sites of critique and complicity. At the same time, however, the discourse allows for recuperating modes of activity that are a conduit for and circumvention of the mail-order bride businesses and their male
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